Casca 15: The Pirate (9 page)

Now what?

Casca could see the brig bearing down on him, all sails set, but at a tack. She was very fast. His own sloop moved sluggishly, the barnacled hull dragging, the overbalanced side with the hogsheads making one tack very difficult.

"Board her to windward, Sir," Julio offered.

"Windward?"

"
Yessir."

"Where the hell did you learn so much about tactics?"

"I was a royal cadet, Sir." Something had transformed the young Spaniard. The prospect of action had apparently thrown him back into another time. His manner was disciplined, military.

Casca considered
… Hell, maybe the kid knew what he was talking about. "Windward. That would be hard to do with this slow tub."

"Ordinarily, yes Sir. But look! The
color of the water there. That lighter color. Shoal water, Sir. He'll have to avoid that unless he knows the waters here very well and it is deep enough for him to cross. But these shoals change all the time. I don't think he would risk it, Sir."

The kid keeps using 'he" in his mind it is a naval battle
.

"Look, Sir! I'm right! She's shortening sail." The brig was coming under easy sail.
"Get on the weather quarter of her, Sir! Come within half a pistol shot!" Excitement raced through the boy's voice, and his face glowed.

"All right," Casca decided. Go with the kid. "Come about!" he yelled. "Make all sail!" Maybe, with a little luck
…

Damn!

On the tack the weight of the hogsheads canted the sloop far over, but, oddly, that very angle seemed to help. The old ship was slicing through the water like a live thing.

"I'd suggest, Sir, you lay on board on the weather side, either exactly abreast or a little abaft." Julio's voice was now crisp, cool, and he was standing rigidly beside Casca as if to belie the excitement in his dark brown eyes. A warmth came over Casca, a warmth greater than the heat of the tropic sun that was beaming full down now that the shadow of the sail had shifted away on this tack. Julio. Like a son. That he could have a son like this.
..

They were closing fast. Out of Casca's side vision he saw one of his gunners reach for a slow match.

"Don't fire until I give the order!" he bellowed, first in English, then again in Spanish. "And in platoon!" Damn! He couldn't think of the Spanish word for platoon.

Julio grinned. "
Unisonancia?" he offered.

"That'll do," Casca agreed, and roared the order that they should fire in unison on his command. Probably shake the sloop to pieces, but what was the difference? Good for only this one battle anyway. All, or nothing at all.

They were within range. The next few moments would tell the story. Casca could see the black muzzles of the brig's cannon trained on him. She was a ten gun brig. They would have to run the gauntlet of the five cannon on this side. Now!... No... The brig was holding fire for some unknown reason.

So that was it!

The brig had been flying no colors. Now the Jolly Roger broke from her mast. Through the brass spyglass, Casca could see the enemy captain also watching him with a spyglass.
Careful son of a bitch. Wanted to make damn sure he knew who I was before he committed himself. Careful
... That was a useful thing to know about an enemy.

Casca caught the slight movement of the spyglass away from the other man's eyes.

"Take cover!" he roared immediately and saw his men drop behind the hogsheads as he had arranged. Only he, Julio, and the helmsman were left standing. Casca started to order the boy to hit the deck, but it was too late.

The brig fired, a rolling volley beginning with the forward cannon and stepping raggedly back toward the stern.

One… Two... Three... Four... Five...

All five cannon had fired before the first shot hit the sloop.

A ball. Into the bow. Low. Almost at waterline. The second ball went into the galley, smashing wood, throwing deadly splinters. The jagged shards of broken timber slashed at the men in range. Screams. Blood. One man was impaled on a long sliver and pushed into the scuppers, his guts oozing out along the jagged edge of the bloody wood.

The third ball missed entirely, almost magically passing through the only clear space between sail and mast and stays without hitting anything.

The fourth hit admidships, smashing timbers close to the waterline, opening a hole it would be wide enough to sink the sloop.

The fifth came a little abaft amidships, but higher than the fourth ball. Casca could feel the shock to the timbers. All his concern about protecting his men from grape had been for nothing. The brig meant to sink them.

Now!

"Stand by to fire! Uno! Dos!
Tres!"

His cannon roared. Maybe not entirely in unison, but reasonably well timed for amateur gunners. A hail of grape poured into the deck of the brig, hidden now by the cloud of smoke.

"Grapnels!"

The ships were coming together. But
–

"Look out, Sir! "Julio yelled. "She's bracing sharp aback her headsails!"

It was hard to see in the smoke, but the tips of the sails did show above the dark cloud from the burned powder. The brig was falling off, and even as Casca watched, the enemy sails aft began to square, to give her sternway.

"Put your helm a weather!" Julio cried, forgetting the "Sir," and the helmsman obeyed even before Casca could give the order, then looked guiltily at Casca, who smiled and nodded.

"Now, a-lee!"

The
maneuver succeeded. The brig's last minute attempt to avoid contact failed. The two ships smashed together, aided actually by the present roll of the brig.

"Grapnels!" Casca repeated, and the two vessels were locked together. "Boarders away!"

Through the smoke he could hear a like order being given on the brig, almost like an echo of his own voice. But then it was time to stop thinking and go to fighting. Cutlass in his right hand, Casca leaped over the gunwales and into the smoke aboard the brig.

Nothing gentle was going on aboard the brig Casca and his men had stormed. If they had thought this was going to be an easy fight they were sadly mistaken. What met them in the smoke and blood on the brig's deck were men
every bit as deadly as they themselves. With one difference: the brig's crew were better armed. First there were the blasts of pistols and muskets. Then the flashing cutlasses against the clubs and what few cutlasses and swords had been in the arms locker of the sloop or taken from its officers of Casca's men.

But the brig crew had not expected such a
maneuver as the boarding on that tack, nor had they expected Casca's savage blast of double loaded grape fired in unison. Nor had they anticipated the animal fierce charge of Casca's men. What they had thought was that they would board the little sloop. What they got was a confused, brutal, bloody battle. Casca's men knew they had only this one chance. Like pit bulldogs that went for the throat, Casca's men went first for the kill.

As
for Casca, that scar faced one had taken a lot of shit recently, and the battle was one way to get it out of his system. Nothing fancy, just swing... chop... cut...

He worked his way to the captain of the brig, a big, tough, bare headed brute with coarse coal black hair who had just emptied a brace of pistols into the men on either side of Casca and now dropped them and reached for his cutlass.

What got Casca's attention was that the captain immediately went into the second position of the Naval Cutlass Exercise, legs angled out, proof that he must have had some British Navy experience. Apparently he did. The son of a bitch knew what he was doing. Casca's blade clashed on his. Cut. Thrust. Parry.

But by now the battle was almost over, and Casca's men were taking the ship, though at terrific losses. After parrying one blow, Casca saw out of the extreme edge of his vision one of the brig crew leaving the battle and heading for the captain's cabin aft. There was something about this one that briefly caught his attention, probably because the brig crewman was so slender. Yet he had fought from what little Casca had seen brilliantly. However, he did not have an opportunity to go into the matter since at that moment the bald-headed captain suddenly pressed the attack.

Casca parried. He was getting tired. And the suppressed anger that had been in him ever since that morning in McAdams' compound boiled backup. The hell with this! He slashed savagely at the captain, recovered immediately, and again pressed the attack. Somewhere in the parry move by the captain Casca's blade slid off the other's and sliced away the captain's ear, which surprised that worthy to no end, a rather fatal mistake since Casca immediately took advantage of the captain's momentary confusion to pull back his cutlass and sweep it again forward, slicing halfway through the captain's neck. Blood spouted from the half severed stump, a fountain whose outer edges sprayed toward Casca, and, though he immediately jumped back, a thin film of the dying man's blood salted his lips.

But the battle was over. Casca's blow was the last of the fight. They had the brig. Casca looked at his men what was left of them. He had lost at least a third, but there were still enough hands to man the brig. Julio, who had come up beside him, was grinning with elation.

"A fine victory, Sir!" he said in Spanish. "You did
–"

Whether Casca saw the movement in the bottom part of the rigging out of the corner of his eye or whether it came totally unexpectedly he never really knew. But there was movement. And a pistol shot. A dying brig crewman who had been posted in the rigging, probably with a musket or two, had fired one ball in the last seconds of his life. He had sighted on the large framed man with the scar on his face.

Casca was knocked off his feet. For a blink of time he thought someone had coldcocked him again. Then he heard the report of the musket and saw Julio spin around and hit the deck. Switching his eyes to where the shot had come from, he saw the shooter let loose of the rigging and fall into the sea.

Scrambling over to Julio he rolled the boy over to his back. A deep sigh of relief went through him. He wasn't hurt bad. The slug had only taken out a piece of meat the width of a man's thumb from his left arm. Dumb kid had seen the crewman taking aim and thrown himself in front of Casca to protect him. An exercise in futility but Julio didn't know that.

He gave the rest of his motley crew orders to do what they could to make ready for sail. They did as they were bade and set about it. Fortunately there wasn't much structural damage. Their own grape shot had killed men but had done little harm to the ship itself. And they worked together, Brotherhood men, Spaniards and black ex-slaves though the truth of the matter was that it was the calming influence of the London fairy that was responsible for the harmony of the moment. He seemed to understand emotions good or bad better than the others.

As they worked Casca washed and bandaged Julio's arm and left him to rest in the shade beside the cook shack and went below to inspect his prize.

He was met at the bottom by the castaway he had appointed first mate who nodded his head down the hallway to the captain's quarters and mumbled: "We got a problem."

"What?"

"Somebody in the captain's cabin. Door's locked. We coulda broke it down, but we thought you..." He left the rest of it unsaid.

But when Casca went down the passageway to the captain's cabin, a ship's lantern in his hand against the darkness, and tried the cabin door it was no longer locked. Behind him the first mate shrugged. "It was locked when we came down."
The lantern light shone on the faces of the two pirates behind the first mate, ship's axes in their hands. Casca turned back to the cabin door and opened it.

A large lamp, swinging in gimbals, lit the cabin brightly. Directly under it, trussed securely to the captain's chair and with a green baize gag in his mouth, was the retarded giant Casca had first met at McAdams' compound.

In the shadows to the giant's left, holding two cocked pistols pointed directly at Casca 's stomach, stood a redheaded woman.

"Hold it right there, Scarface. Take one more step and I'll
fill your stinking gut with lead."

"Katie Parnell?"

"Aye." She smiled. "Oh, hell. The Katie belongs to me. The Parnell I got off a tombstone. It's a long story and not one I'm going to tell you."

The two of them were sitting at the table in the captain's cabin, one on either side, the big giant still trussed and still gagged at the head of the table, his eyes watching Casca and the redheaded woman. There was nobody else in the cabin. Casca had sent the first mate and the two seamen away
, not something that pleased the first mate who had taken one look at the woman and her two pistols and then looked at Casca, the mate's eyes plainly saying that this was a hell of a way to run a ship. But he and the two seamen had gone. The woman had then produced a bottle of wine from the liquor locker, casually laying both pistols on the table as she did so. Indicating the table, she had extracted the cork from the bottle with a practiced hand, taken a healthy swig while still standing, and then sat down and slid the bottle across to Casca, all the time completely ignoring the big giant at the head of the table.

Casca was amused. Very few women he had ever known had behaved anywhere near this way, and there was a kind of good natured mockery in Katie's eyes that seemed to say she took everything in life as a game to be played for the fun of it only. Coming as Casca did from treating Julio and the emotional draining of the battle no matter how many times he fought there was always that dark feeling afterward the strange redhead was a welcome relief. The fact that she was a pretty good looking woman and the wine was first rate reminiscent of the
Falernian of his youth also helped matters. He grinned. "Off a tombstone?"

"Off a tombstone. Now, who the hell are you?"

She was tall for a woman. Even sitting at the table her eyes were on a level with his, and her build was athletic; Casca realized with surprise that she had been the crewman he had seen leave the battle and go toward the captain's cabin. She had fought, then, alongside the men. And if he needed proof, he saw when she moved her arm the dried blood on the leather sleeve. She must be pretty good. He knew his men.

But she was also a woman. The waistcoat had the bulges in the right locations, and when she leaned over the table for the bottle, not asking him for it, but merely leaning over and taking it, he could see down the wide opening of her shirt the obvious contours of her breasts
, not big cow-like boobs but the interesting kind that made one want to coddle her.

"Who are you?" she repeated. "I thought I knew all the Brotherhood captains. Are you new to the business?"

"Yes."

"You got a fucking name?"

The way she said it was... well... different. Neither the word nor the kind of explosive rat a tat tat spacing of her speech was what one might expect from a lady of quality. On the other hand the kind of impish amusement in her changeable eyes they were either gray or brown depending on the way the light hit them and the impression she gave that life was the laughing joke of a child made any tagging of her as an ordinary whore out of the question. She was simply something different.

"Name," she repeated. "You got to have your pump primed? Ain't you never seen no woman before?"

That did it. Casca grinned. He looked at her and spoke solemnly: "Methinks the laddy doth protest too much."

She threw her head back and roared with laughter, and with her head back there was a graceful sweep to her neck. A mature woman, but a young one. Maybe twenty four. Maybe twenty five.
She stopped the laugh as quickly as it had begun, but the merriment was still in her eyes. "Shakespeare! Forsooth the man hath read Shakespeare! A pirate captain who quotes Shakespeare! Scarface, art thou the Bard of Avon come back to life to ride the waves 'neath the Jolly Roger? Is thy name William?"

Casca didn't know what the hell she was talking about, and the thought that maybe she was making fun of him pissed him off a little. He said sourly: "Captain Cass Long." Then to play whatever game she had started with the words: "At your service, ma'am
."

Her eyes again glinted with the impish light. "And I bet your service would be fucking good, too, Captain Long. Only I do not intend to be serviced at the moment. You have missed the rutting season, Scarface."

Casca had had enough of it. "Who the hell are you, anyway? And why have you got him tied up?" He pointed toward the big giant.

"Oh, him."

"Where did you get him?"

"We fished him out of the water. Around dawn. He was hanging onto a hatch cover."

"You tie up everybody you fish out of the water?"

"I do if I remember seeing him at the Governor's Palace in Virginia. I think he's a spy for Governor
Spotiswoode."

"Spy?" That had been Blackbeard's excuse for marooning him. What was going on here?

''Yes"

"And what were you doing in the Governor's Palace in Virginia?" Where was Virginia, anyway? Was that the colony just above Charles Town? Casca wasn't too sure of his geography.

"And wouldn't you like to know, Captain Cass Long or whatever your name is, Scarface.”

"He's no spy."

"How do you know?"

"He was McAdams' bodyguard."

"What? How do you know that?"

"We were on Blackbeard's ship together. Going to meet Tarleton Duncan."

"Ah!" She thought about that for a moment, then got up, went to the giant, took a dirk from the sheath at her waist, cut his ropes, and pulled the gag from his mouth. "If you know McAdams, then whatever you say is okay. But this one here... he seemed a little odd."

Casca tapped his own forehead. "Sometimes a belfry doesn't carry a full set of bells."

She looked puzzled. Then she understood. "Ah!"

Casca did not tell her he was certain that the giant only pretended to be retarded. Instead he said: "But he's an excellent fighter."

"Is he now? Then what was he doing floating on a hatch cover in the middle of the ocean?"

"I don't know. Ask him."

"I did. Without satisfaction." Suddenly her eyes narrowed and she turned back to Casca. "McAdams. Tarleton Duncan. If you were on your way with Teach to meet Tarleton Duncan, then what are you doing captaining such a ragtag and bobtail crew? And with such a miserable excuse for a ship?"

Casca grinned.
He gave her own words right back to her. "And wouldn't you like to know, Katie Parnell, or whatever your name is?"

That's when the storm hit, the storm that had been brewing all day. Whatever Casca might have found out from Katie or she from him had to be put aside when the first blast of the gale force wind nearly threw the brig on her beams. Then came the thunder, lightning, torrential rains, high seas and gusting winds. They fought the storm for most of the night, the brig pitching and rolling,
plowing her bow under the invincible waves, rolling so far abeam that the yardarms would have pointed at the sky had the sky been visible. And all in pitch blackness.

Less than an hour before dawn the storm suddenly ceased or they had waddled out of it as quickly as it had hit, and in the ragged
gray opening torn in the sky a full moon shone. By daylight even the sea was calm, and the following day was perfect, the brig gliding gently over a blue sea touched occasionally with tiny whitecaps from a soft breeze.

And it stayed that way for days. A pirate's life? This was more like a vacation at sea or more likely an outing for women on an inland lake. Casca didn't complain. Hell, a, man took what he could get. He would ride with it.
Of course, one ride he did not get. Katie Parnell could take care of herself, and though Casca felt he would eventually bed her, that pleasant state of affairs did not come to pass yet. Nor did he really learn who Katie was. He got hints. What he put together seemed to be that Katie's mother had been the mistress of some important man in the colonies somebody very high up and this man had been Katie's father. She knew a hell of a lot about government at the top level. And she apparently knew a hell of a lot about some other things, too. But what was she doing in the Brotherhood? All Casca could get out of her was the implication that, as a woman, she would never be allowed to use her talents in the respectable world, but as a pirate she could be whatever she was damn well capable of being. But whether this was the truth or not he could not tell. Katie liked to lie when it was just for the fun of it. She was certainly not your normal everyday woman.

But she was a source of information. Casca learned more about pirates and piracy talking to her than he had so far being one himself. For one thing, the business of the Brotherhood was just that
– business. Almost all the pirates had connections, those that didn't didn't stay in the trade very long. Many were "silent partners" to merchants ashore. Sometimes a cargo of sugar, adroitly handled by the merchant ashore, returned more gold to the pirate than the capture of a Spanish "treasure ship." And there was connivance in high places. Governor Eden of North Carolina apparently made no bones about his associations even to the point of attending one of Blackbeard's "weddings."

It was at the mention of Blackbeard 's weddings that Katie came closest to acting like a woman or rather showing a woman's anger. Blackbeard, she said, had been married more than a dozen times fifteen, sixteen, nobody knew the exact number of times and each time to a young girl, usually in her mid
-teens. What made Katie furious was the fact that on each wedding night after Blackbeard had enjoyed the girl as long as he wished, he would then call in his officers and turn the girl over to them five, six, however many it happened to be and they would use her for the rest of the night. Nice people, these pirate captains. And what did she know about Tarleton Duncan?

The expression on her face grew thoughtful, and, since she was standing with Casca at the rail of the ship, she looked out toward the far horizon.
"I don't really know what it is that created the whispers about Tarleton Duncan. In fact, I don't know what the whispers are, though I suspect it's because I'm a woman that nobody tells me. But there's something. Something odd..."

Casca had to leave it at that.
What really got him, though, was Katie's assertion that most pirates weren't odd. Casca just happened to have known the oddest, Blackbeard. Most captains were pretty ordinary men. "Prove that," Casca challenged her.

"Well, take
Stede Bonnet. Major Stede Bonnet. Just an ordinary bored man. He was living off 500 pounds a year in real estate in Barbados. On the quiet, and because he was bored, he fitted out a sloop from that island so he could become a pirate. He wasn't too competent, and even though the ship belonged to him personally, the crew put in under the command of one of his foremast men, a certain Edward Teach."

"Blackbeard?"

"Yes. Though that name came later. "

"But they still operate together."

"Oh, yes. It's a business, you see, Scarface."

"Just ordinary people."

"Just ordinary people."

But the giant he had
traveled with from McAdams' compound was not "ordinary people." Or was he? It was a day or so before Casca could talk to him alone.

"What the hell were you doing in the water?"

"Accident. I was trying to steal a boat, and in the darkness I fell overboard."

"Steal a boat?"

"To come to your aid."

"Mine?"

"When Blackbeard marooned you, I thought it was because you were a spy for Woodes Rogers."

"Aye? Well, now..."

"Why did you vouch for me?"

"Shit, man, everybody to his own business."

"And you don't care that I'm–"

"In the pay of the governor of Virginia? That's your business, fellow."

"And your business?"

"What I contracted with McAdams for to get his niece. And then get my ass to the mainland."

"But you've got a ship of your own now. Why not just go to Charles Town yourself?"

"I thought of that."

"And?"

"Bastards like McAdams have a lot of connections. I might get to the mainland faster by doing his little job which should not be too hard to do."

"You think so."

Casca shrugged.

"But you're officially a pirate yourself now. If you're caught you could be hanged."

"That's true."

The giant was quiet for a moment, then he said: "You know something, Cass Long?"

"I overheard part of your conversation with the woman about which pirates were odd and which were not. The thing is, Cass Long, you're the odd one."

Casca smiled and started to respond, but at that moment he saw two of the Spanish pirates standing by the foremast engaged in what was obviously a very, very private conversation, and the smile left his face. So far there had been no trouble among the Spaniards, the Brotherhood men, the three remaining black slaves, and those of the crew of the brig who still lived. He hadn't been around men who had the potential for explosion for nothing. He knew he might be sitting on a powder keg.

And probably was...